Oldal 56 [56]
THE FORA FOR JUSTICE:
SOME REFLECIIONS ON PEACEBUILDING AND
RECONCILIATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE
OF THE NUREMBERG AND THE ICTY TRIALS
——o—
VIOLETA BESIREVIC?
The purpose of a trial is to render justice, and
nothing else[...JHence, to the question that is
commonly asked about the Eichmann trial: What
good does it do? There is but one possible answer:
It will do justice.”
This short essay, written to honor professor Karoly Bard, is aimed to shed light on
the underlying questions related to listing peacebuilding and reconciliation in the
mandate of ad hoc international criminal tribunals and hybrid courts. To argue
against this practice, two different legacies, the Nuremberg’s and the ICTY’s, are
brought into perspective.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Karoly Bard was my professor and, for a while, my dear colleague with whom I
worked together at the Constitutional and Legislative Policy Institute, affiliated
with the Open Society Institute and Central European University in Budapest.
While we were working together back in the 1990s, the former Yugoslavia, where
I came from, suffered from the tragic civil war, while Serbia, my domicile country,
was exposed to the NATO intervention, which was not grounded in international
law. This is an opportunity to thank Karoly for knowing how to make me smile
during that challenging time.
Among many tasks we accomplished together, Karoly and I worked to promote
the establishment of the International Criminal Court; therefore, to honor him, I
have chosen the criminal justice topic, although constitutional and human rights
law have been predominant fields of my teaching and research.
1 Professor of Law, Union University Law School Belgrade; S.J.D. Central European University.
2 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, New York,
Penguin Books, 1994, 253-254.
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